Cosmic Wimpout

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Cosmic Wimpout

Cosmic Wimpout is a dice game produced by C3, Inc.^[1]

It is played with 5 custom dice. An optional combination score board and rolling surface, in the form of a piece of cloth or felt available in various colors and designs, may also be used. Players supply their own game piece for score keeping.

Cosmic Wimpout was introduced in 1976 and has often been associated with the Berkeley, Grateful Dead, and other free-form subcultures.^{[citation needed]}

The annual tournament currently takes place at the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

1 Gameplay
2 References
3 Related Games
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The game is played by rolling all five dice and adding up the player's score: any fives and tens rolled are worth that amount, and rolling three of a kind of any number (the swirls are twos, the triangular glyphs are three, the lightning bolts are four, and the stars are sixes), called a flash, is worth ten times the number of one of those dice. For example, rolling three twos is worth 20 points, and rolling three fives is worth fifty. When a player rolls scoring dice, he or she must put them to the side, and may choose to either keep the points they have, or roll the non scoring dice and try for more. However, if one rolls the dice, and no points are scored, they have "wimped out" and lost all points gained in this round.^[1] Herein lies most of the game's strategy: if one keeps the points they get, they effectively have those points for the entire game, and cannot pass below that value, house rules not withstanding. For example, if someone were to score 35 points in one turn, and then stop, they could never have less than 35 points for the entire game. However, there are three situations where one cannot stop: when all five dice have been scored (a player must then pick all five dice up and reroll them for more points. This rule is known as You May Not Want To But You Must, or YMNWTBYM), when one has less than 35 points overall (this is called "getting into the game"), and when one rolls a flash (this is called "clearing the flash" and the rule involved is the "futtless rule".)^[2]

In his 2007 essay on the game, game designer Andrew Looney said "I would say that Cosmic Wimpout is the single most influential game I've ever played" and that the game "has a clean, elegant set of rules that allows losing players to feel they still have a chance at a come-from-behind victory."^[1] Looney cites Cosmic Wimpout's influence from a French dice game called Dix Mille (Ten Thousand) and names other versions/variations of the game such as Bupkis, Greed, Farkle, and Zonk.^[1]